Performance - Part II

Multimedia & Battery Life Performance

The Galaxy S II’s display is nothing short of spectacular. To start off, its size is optimal for mobile entertainment, be it watching clips or playing games on-the-go. Secondly, it boasts of excellent color reproduction, contrast, and viewing angles even under sunlight. Thirdly, AMOLED screens are known for its higher level of power efficiency, and with the Super AMOLED Plus display, the phone managed to last for 8 hours and 13 minutes. This is almost 80 minutes more than the Galaxy S on our standard battery test. If you are not a big fan of the intensely saturated colors on the screen, the phone comes with a new screen setting called Background Effect with three saturation modes – dynamic, standard and movie – to choose from.

The Samsung Galaxy S did pretty well in the photography aspect so naturally, we had high hopes with the Galaxy S II.

We found that the overall photographic performance for the Galaxy S II was pretty good, and we had no problems shooting on the smartphone - colors were well-contrasted (sometimes, a bit over-saturated) and photos exhibited a high level of detail and clarity and low level of noise. We especially like the shortcut functionality of the built-in camera app as well as the extensive settings that it offers (touch focus, face/blink/smile detection, ISO levels and more). However, the annoying quirk that showed itself on the Galaxy S comes back on the Galaxy S II: the camera app won't start when the battery indicator falls into the red zone.

Next up, we compared the Samsung Galaxy S II's battery performance with a selected group of devices chosen for their similarities across battery capacities, display sizes, resolution and processing power. This standard battery test consists of looping a 480 x 800 pixels resolution video clip at 100% volume and screen brightness, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth active with push email or data being pulled at regular intervals. For this handset, we compared it against other similar Android devices such as the Motorola Atrix, LG Optimus 2X, and Samsung Galaxy S.

Specifications/Device

Samsung Galaxy S II

Motorola Atrix

LG Optimus 2X

Samsung Galaxy S

Processor

Dual-core 1.2GHz

Dual-core 1GHz

Dual-core 1GHz

1GHz

Display Size

4.27-inch

4.0-inch

4.0-inch

4.0-inch

Display Type

Super AMOLED Plus

TFT-LCD

TFT-LCD

Super AMOLED

Display Resolution

480 x 800 pixels

540 x 960 pixels

480 x 800 pixels

480 x 800 pixels

Dimensions

125.3 x 66.1 x 8.5 mm

117.8 x 63.5 x 11 mm

123.9 x 63.2 x 10.9 mm

122.4 x 64.2 x 9.9 mm

Weight

116g

135g

139g

119g

Battery

1650mAh

1930mAh

1500mAh

1500mAh

The Galaxy S II performs extremely well in battery life testing. The Samsung Galaxy S has always been known for its good battery life amidst the other Android phones (even those that have been released after it) and the Galaxy S II ups the ante with an even better battery life. AMOLED screens are generally more power efficient than its peers, and the Galaxy S II's Super AMOLED Plus display has shown its worth in this case.

As a result, the Galaxy S II also exhibits the lowest level of power consumption. This is pretty impressive given that it shares similar hardware specs with the Optimus 2X and Atrix but requires only 2/3 of their levels of power consumption.

The Galaxy S II is the lightest smartphone in the lot, and followed closely by its predecessor. It comes with the second highest battery capacity, with Motorola Atrix taking the highest spot with a battery capacity of 1930mAh. With all these factors combined with the longest battery life, the Samsung Galaxy S II naturally scored the highest in our Portability Ratio index. To recap, this ratio derived from dividing battery life against (weight x volume).

Overall, the Galaxy S II did extremely well, lasting way beyond its fellow peers. To give a good gauge, while rationing the phone for normal day-to-day operations, the phone could last for at least a working day and a half.